Jon Wertheim: This marks the fourth anniversary of Andy Murray’s quasi-retirement. His cheerful exit from the 2019 Australian Open, when the tournament went so far as to produce a farewell video, well…how silly that looks today. Murray never formally retired. He underwent a hip resurfacing procedure and struggled to return. But now, four years later, he’s still going. He won a first round match that spanned nearly five hours. And now he’s managed to outdo himself in the second round, looking more like the player who once became number one than the 35 year-old father of four with a metal hip.
He turned in one of the more enthralling matches of his career, beating Australian Thanasi Kokkanakis 4-6, 6-7, 7-6, 6-3, 7-5. The whole thing took nearly six hours and ended around 4 a.m. local time.
After his first-round win over Matteo Berrettini, Murray, uncharacteristically, said he was proud of himself and deserved to win. You could only imagine his reflections on this follow-up victory. He won this match playing usual Murray tennis. Playing chess to his opponent’s checkers. This was Murray at his best strategically and his best—at least in recent years—physically. How gratifying it must feel to have played more than 10 hours of tennis in two rounds at a major and not have a loss to show for it? You also can’t ignore the presence of Ivan Lendl in the Murray camp. One of Lendl’s big priorities was to get Murray to hit bigger. And it was clear, on both his serve and his groundstrokes, that Murray was using more force in this match.
